BATON ROUGE – McNeese put up a hard-fought battle against fifth-ranked LSU on Tuesday night, but the Tigers took over for good when back-to-back home runs from Cade Beloso and Hayden Travinski to begin the bottom of the sixth-inning sparked a string of four unanswered runs to lead LSU to a 7-4 win.
The loss dropped the Cowboys' record to 32-19 overall while LSU improved to 40-12 in playing its final regular-season home game of the year.
McNeese out-hit the Tigers by a 12-9 margin. Left fielder
Cooper Hext carried the hot bat on the night with a career-best four hits in five plate appearances. He also knocked in a run as part of the Cowboys' three-run third inning that tied the game 3-3 at the time.
Tré Obregon III and
Braley Hollins each recorded two hits.
Obregon started the third-inning rally with a two-out bunt single as the Cowboys trailed 3-0. That was the first of five consecutive singles as
Brad Burckel, Hollins, Hext and
Taylor Darden followed. Hollins, Hext and Darden's knocks all scored runs to tie the game 3-3.
McNeese went up 4-3 in the sixth inning when two LSU errors allowed the Cowboys to take advantage of the situation and grab the lead. Following an
Andruw Gonzales groundout,
Braden Duhon reached when his grounder to the pitcher was mishandled, allowing him to reach on an error.
Payton Harden hit an infield single then another fielding error by the Tigers on a
Josh Leslie ground ball to second base, allowed the Cowboys to load the bases.
Obregon followed with an RBI fielder's choice when he was able to beat out the throw to first base on a double play attempt. That scored Duhon to put McNeese up 4-3.
LSU responded with its back-to-back homers in the bottom of the inning to put it up 5-4, then the Tigers scored two more in the eighth inning to build a 7-4 lead.
McNeese landed the first two batters of the ninth on back on singles by Hollins and Hext, but after a Tigers pitching change, the next two Cowboy batters struck out. Duhon then drew a walk to load the bases but Harden grounded out to first base to end the game.
The Cowboys left 16 runners on base on the night, 10 of those in scoring position with four of those stranded on third base.
McNeese will return home on Wednesday night at 6 when it hosts Miami-Ohio to begin a three-game series to close out the regular season schedule.
